This post was from the last week of May 2007
Steven fell at school on Wednesday and scraped his knee. No big deal, right? WRONG!!!! You see, Steven has never gotten a scrape like this before--it's a little larger than the size of a quarter, and the 'road rash' covers an area about 2"x3" (yes I know, he's 11 years old, and he has had injuries before, including a broken wrist, but this was the worst scrape he's ever had). So I go to pick him up from my grandmother's that afternoon and that's when I found out he was hurt. I asked him if Meme had cleaned his wound yet and he got this fearful look on his face and said no. I told him that he knew that it had to be done, and we could either do it at Meme's house, or do it at our house, but that I preferred to do it at Meme's house.
The reason I preferred doing it at her house was that I was hoping it would make him a little calmer, that he wouldn't be so fearful of getting it 'doctored' than he would be if it was just the 2 of us there. Yes, he has this intense fear of having wounds cleaned and doctored for some reason, he's horribly afraid of pain and is afraid that the cleaning and application of Neosporin will be excessively painful.
Well, I call my mom to tell her how my job interview that afternoon went, and to also let her know about Steven's knee injury, and my grandmother goes and gets the peroxide, Neosporin, cotton balls, q-tips and kleenex, and when she enters the living room, Steven immediately starts crying and freaking out, and my mom can hear him on the phone. That's when my giggling began. Mother and I thought it was funny that he would carry on like that, just seeing the stuff we were going to use to doctor his knee.
I finish talking to her and go in there, sitting on the footstool and propping his leg up on mine. He starts begging me to leave him alone (mind you I haven't even done anything yet)--long story short it takes about 10 minutes before I'm able to finally pour the peroxide on the wound. It sits there for all of about 3 seconds and he starts screaming bloody freakin murder like someone is chopping his leg off with no anesthesia. My grandmother is fussing at him to hush, she couldn't believe he was screaming like that. She actually told him to hush his mouth before the neighbors called the police! Then he wouldn't let me wipe the foam off, he had to do that himself.
After that was done, I needed to put some Neosporin on it, but he wouldn't let me. I got him to agree to let me "drop" it on there, so he held my hand about 2-3" above his knee, and I had to squirt the tube so that it would fall on the wound. We got that taken care of, then went to leave. He got up stiff-legged and I told him he better walk on it and bend it or it would get stiff and he would have problems walking.
Some of you may think I am mean and cruel, but I couldn't help but laugh and/or giggle the entire time I'm trying to doctor this child. I know it wasn't funny that he was hurt, or that he was so fearful over the whole thing, but something just kept me laughing and giggling uncontrollably.
We went to Walmart and Target and he insisted on getting the electric cart at both places. I didn't mind so much, as long as it kept him happy and with me. But it only got better once we got home and Marion (my step-dad) got ahold of him.
Marion starts picking at him at dinner time, asking him if he cried like a girl. Of course Steven starts to weep a little, and Marion starts laughing, and my giggling and laughing starts up again. Steven says that his New-nee (my mom) is going to ground us both from the tv, computer, and our cell phones, if we don't stop laughing and being mean to him. Then Mom says something about I bet you're gonna have a hard time getting him the shower tonight, and of course Marion starts in on how the water is going to burn his knee like acid, and it will feel horrible and will feel like it's going to burn him down to the bone. Steven ran over to me and grabbed me, sobbing and begging me to make Marion stop but all I could do was laugh.
I tried to get Mom in trouble for laughing too, but she of course said she was laughing at me and Marion--Marion was over there going "oh my god, stop, you're killing me" and I'm saying "stop making me laugh, my belly hurts" and was holding my stomach. Steven said he believe his New-nee, that she wasn't laughing at him, only at us.
Mom left the room, so Steven said something again about Mom was going to ground us, so Marion asked him what gave her the power to ground us, and Steven said 'because she's older than all of us so she has the power". Marion counters with "yeah, that's why we're getting ready to put her in a nursing home so it doesn't matter". Steven of course goes and runs to tell his New-nee what his Poppy said about her.
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